Happy Geek Pride Day! The Geeks have inherited the earth, so celebrate your inner geek.
Thanks to Librarian in Black for pointing me to Ars Technica, who are celebrating Geek Day by revealing their geek origins.
Mine are humble, but telling: I was about 14 when my Dad brought home the Apple IIe – a green monochrome monitor, keyboard, two floppy drives — one for reading code, and one for writing code — and dot-matrix printer. I was addicted from the beginning. There were a few games – like early, text-based and ascii-art versions of Castle Wolfenstein, Sneakers and Wizardry. I would buy copies of MacWorld magazine and copy-type in code for nifty DIY games. I began writing all my school papers using the word processor, which didn’t really please my teachers – how could they be sure it was my work, if not in my handwriting?
After seeing War Games I became obsessed with networked computers and begged my Dad for a modem. He bought me one, not really knowing what I was up to … until he received our telephone bill heavy with long-distance calls to the Hamilton BBS. Oh, that was a rough day for sure. But also the beginning of my love affair with computer technology.
Sadly, the IIe was our last family Apple – from there we migrated to the PC world. At school we had these crazy ICON computers and later Commodore 64s. Fortunately, I have re-embraced Apple once again, being a devotee to my iPod Touch, iPhone 3Gs, Mac Mini and MacBook Air.
An undergraduate degree from Waterloo (the Geek Heaven of Canadian universities) and five co-op terms at IBM labs sealed my fate. I was a geek, and always would be. I credit my geekiness for being the info pro I am today.